20D auto-rotate problem

Bill_Jurasz · #1 03-27-2006, 11:13 AM

Earlier this year I saw sporadic auto-rotate failures on my 20D, images that were not rotated. This past weekend I'm seeing it again, but in a strange way. In OS-X's Finder the thumbnail is rotated. Open the image in Preview, Bridge or CS2 at its rotated. Attach the image to a Mail and it is not rotated. And uploaded to my Smugmug account it is not rotated. The EXIF appears to have a metadata tag for a -90 degree rotation. However I'm thinking something is a bit fishy with the camera.

Anyone seen something like this? Is that flag in the EXIF the only thing required to rotate an image?

This camera was bought about as soon as it came out and gets heavy use in dirty, dusty environments and I wonder if toll is being taken. And to think I've been looking for an "excuse" to buy a 1-series...

JimPope · #2 03-28-2006, 03:05 PM

I don’t think it is the camera because it is inconsistent from program to program. Therefore, I think it is the programs displaying the file. I seem to recall this sort of rotation issue having something to do with multiple sets of DLLs in different locations but I’m not sure of the details.

I'm having the same problem with a little free file viewer program called Faststone. It is not rotating the raw files properly for my 10D but it works fine with my 20D.

OOPS! But I just realized that you are using a Mac so that's not the problem.

Fred_Tedsen · #3 03-28-2006, 03:36 PM

Bill,

It appears that the Mail app doesn't recognize the rotate flag. I usually send attachments from a a little script in iView, so it is not an issue. But I just tried attaching an image that should have been rotated directly, and sure enough it was not. So blame Mail, your 20D is fine.

Bill_Jurasz · #4 03-29-2006, 02:18 PM

Fred - thanks for the reply and I've discovered you are correct. Camera is fine. It appears the flag that camera sets in the in-camera JPG is either non-standard, or multiple standards for rotate flags exist. Any rate, if a rotated image is opened in Photoshop (which does obey the rotate flag) and then simply saved back as a JPG, that resulting JPG is rotated properly and displays properly in all applications I've tried. Odd.

Gary_Voth · #5 03-30-2006, 02:56 AM

There is still a lot of software that does not recognize the EXIF rotation flag in JPEG images... I have found that using an acquisition tool that rotates JPEGs automatically during download (such as Breeze Downloader) is the easiest way to deal with this.